Monday, March 28, 2011

Leadership.....

What a week!  It seems that most people that I've talked to this week were having especially busy weeks with their work and home lives.....OH, and we also had to study for our second economics test (joke intended as if it were an after thought HA).  As it turned out to be a busy week for us all, our learning team had another person from the class to join with us in our study session this weekend for the test.  Then, two of us decided to join his group the next day to continue the study.  That time studying together proved to be priceless and I think we all did well on the test.

Leadership Study:
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Last night I took the Strengths Finder survey online and got my report.  This survey is like the typical personality type survey where you answer questions by choosing one option over another.  There were 177 questions and I made myself answer the questions immediately without trying to over-think them. I asked my wife to read the report first to give me her first impression of it before I read it.  I always find the type of personality/strengths tests both annoying and intriguing.  Annoying because I don't like to be "categorized" or put "in a box", but yet it is intriguing, because I found that it was right on the money with 95% of how it attributed me.

Additionally, I enjoyed the reading assignment for the class far more than I thought I would.  Because of the busy week, I didn't read the books until today.  I took a long lunch and read.  When I got to the book, Leadership and Self-Deception: Getting out of the Box by Arbinger Institute, I read the first five chapters as assigned and found that I didn't want to stop.  The story is engaging and you naturally want to keep reading to find out what happens next.

Photo by Cammie Wilkerson
Tonight, we spent time learning what others' strength attributes were and roamed the room interviewing one another about those strengths.  I found that completely fascinating.  I really appreciated the transparency of the discussion, not just from Dr. Ford's facilitation, but from my cohort.  A portion of our time dealt with the subject of vulnerability including a great video of Dr. Brene Brown discussing the value of vulnerability.  I shared with the cohort that I have always felt transparent and have not been resistant to being vulnerable, but still, the video challenges me to ask myself if I really am vulnerable or can I be more vulnerable.  I highly encourage you to check out that video...http://www.ted.com/talks/brene_brown_on_vulnerability.html

As I reflect on the week and this evening's classes, I find myself, as usual, appreciating my learning team, but the experiences of this week and the discussions in class tonight make me appreciate the total cohort that we're  on this journey together.  I think that appreciation started a couple of weeks ago when the individual presentations started, then last week with group presentations.  During those two weeks, I heard people speaking in class for the very first time.  Now tonight, we just went a little deeper together in class.  From someone that gets energy from learning about others and knowing their stories, this evening has supplied me with lots of energy.  So to my fellow cohort members, thank YOU.

3 comments:

  1. well said. the entire class is opening up. leadership will prove to a great class for cohort discussion

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  2. I completely agree about the class getting more intimate. I think as a class we may be very bright, but we all may have a fear of being vulnerable and that caused us to take 8 weeks to open up. I certainly appreciated you joining us for the study session and the links you provided the class. Any MBA student in a later cohort should contact you for a great set of study videos for economics on the second test. Those videos covered the content so well, that the test seemed like child's play.

    Job Well Done

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  3. The video on being vulnerable really hit home for me! Enjoyed the post-Thanks John.

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